Progress on Maandevos-Maandevos wiärd báren!

In the thicket, under the crescent moon... the fox is hiding on its prowl.

In the dark soil, rich and of musky scent, a bar of steel did hide for decades...

Steel it is of skillful provenience, ardent and valiant, and yet pitted deeply by the ravaging rust; once it was smelted to achieve true temper... and the smiths laboured with all their might to produce a bar from the ingot, a chisel from the bar of steel. It was used to near extinction, beaten and battered and ground anew until little did remain of it... decades of hard use and pounding it saw... and then it hid in the tracks of deer and the wild boar. The owl flew above the soil where it was hidden, and the fox trod over it on its hunt.

And the crescent moon shone.

And in the tracks of fox and boar, of deer and hare I saw it, submerged in the musky earth, where death and life reign supreme. The forge was lit with roaring fire, and again a smith did labour long and carefully to pound the metal and forge into it the fangs of the fox, the light of the crescent moon, the graceful and lithe roebuck and the furious boar.

As of yet, it has seen no temper and no quench - but soon the time will come when it will be lying in the roaring embers to incorporate the mighty fire, too.

Thus it will sing.

Thus it will bite.

Skogsrunar iak minni.

Rummaging through my chaotic drawers and the scrap heaps in my attic-turned-home:-) I came across this relic of a bygone past. This is an old knife I made long ago in my old home in the woods (Alas! This time will never come back:-/), in a happier time when life still made some more sense (might be I was young then and had tiny sorrows and now I am not and have not:-)).

I forged this blade under a starlit winter sky, with the sound of owls hooting and wild deer and pigs rustling in the underbrush. The fox was watching the roaring forge in the twilight, and hare and porcupine and the humble mice and the birds of the night were looking on. I forged this blade as a three-layer laminate out of rebar and file steel, and it was one of my first attempts. Thence there were still pine and spruce and pinion trees swaying in a gentle breeze, before the storm "Kyril" laid them low. The blade was mounted several years ago, however, when I had already left my home near the lake, and I made a handle out of reindeer antler with a simple dragon head carving, a copper ferrule, and a runic inscription with a somewhat "pidgin";-) Old Norse motto: "Skogsrunaminni" should mean: "(I) remember (the) forest´s runes". It should be a talisman against the hellish noise and circumstances I now live in, and so far it has succeeded to keep the memory alive, and always will. Other than that, being selectively tempered in an urine concoction after the "Wein artzt" (17something), it´s a mean cutter, too. I still like it, and I will make a new sheath for it. The knife and its message deserve it.

A wonderful bimble with the magic troll;-)

I visited the magic troll last weekend. It has been quite some time, and I deeply regret that, but life is not always good to us. It felt simply good to spend time with the person I love most in the world, but that is private;-). Anyway, we went for a bimble in the sunny hills above her home and simply enjoyed each other´s company and the weather and nature which is slowly awakening from a long winter´s slumber.

A pale winter sun still, but a sun it was, and it warmed our souls. We silently, smilingly wandered through this wonderful light and into the forest.

This ancient spruce stood beside the trail,

... and in the hedge there was this abandoned bird´s nest.

The sun went lower, and over MUDDY;-) puddles and leftover snow we came to a bench beside the trail...

And the magic troll was so excited to take a break she had to dance out of joy!!!!*ggg*

We sat there snuggled together, had a cuppa tea from our wooden pints;-) and enjoyed a beautiful sunset. As we sat there, we observed a fox strolling by on his own business, seemingly completely ignorant to the fact that there were a lot of people around. My favourite person made some photos, and watch her blog for ´em!

As the light drew to a close, we observed a herd of roe deer in the distance, grazing there unscathed by our presence, too. It was a very energizing outing again.

We have to do that again soon!;-)